Spanish bureaucracy is strangling new development, and driving up the cost of housing, claim industry insiders.

Architects and developers blamed Spain’s sclerotic administration and dysfunctional regulations for hampering home building and innovation in the closing session of a recent event at the Sert School of architecture in Barcelona.

Quoted in the Spanish daily La Vanguardia, Elena Massot, vice president of the Association of Property Developers and Building Constructors (APCE), pointed out that developers “spend more time obtaining permits to build a home than actually building it.” 

It can take two years to get a building licence, and a further year to get a Certificate of Completion or Occupancy after a two-year construction period. That means it takes five years from applying for a building licence to getting the final certificate, and 60 percent of that time is taken up with red-tape. 

These bureaucratic delays drive up costs, which are passed onto home buyers, making housing more expensive. Dysfunctional town planning departments also make residential new developments more risky, which also adds to development costs as investors charge a higher risk-premium.

Higher risks and costs push developers and investors towards high-end projects, and away from building affordable housing, where there is less margin if things go wrong.

Kafkaesque situations

Incoherent regulations put architects in “Kafkaesque situations,” said Sandra Bestraten, president of the Barcelona chapter of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia. “The regulations contradict each other because new rules are made without eliminating the old ones,” which creates legal uncertainty that “causes stress for architects, due to our professional responsibility,” leaving them vulnerable to frequent lawsuits.

In many city councils, the heads of permit departments, responsible for interpreting whether projects meet technical standards, are lawyers, not architects. “These are precisely the councils with the most delays,” said Bestraten.

The situation is partly a hangover from the Spanish building boom when “the architect was seen as the friendly face of the speculator,” said Joan Ramon Riera, Housing Commissioner of the Barcelona City Council. “When an architect walked into city hall, they were automatically suspicious. We need a cultural shift to rebuild trust between the administration and those they serve.” 

The regulations of the Technical Building Code also drive up costs. “They raise the quality of housing but make construction more expensive,” pointed out Elena Massot. “Homes from 20 years ago weren’t that bad.”